


Dissolution

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2018 [39]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen, Past Torture, Past Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Strong Language, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-25 16:08:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17124512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Rook brings Pratt to Holland Valley.





	Dissolution

_I am meat._  
  
_No, I am **not** meat._  
  
Jacob had done worse than brainwash him, or kill him: He’d split Pratt’s mind in half, left him warring with himself over what was reality and what wasn’t.  
  
He was weak; but he had survived Jacob.  
  
He was meat; but he alive, still a thinking, feeling person (even if those feelings weren’t so great at the moment).  
  
He was a murderer; but it had all been under duress, under the spell of Jacob’s conditioning and that _fucking_ song.  
  
He was a police officer; but instead of protecting and serving, he’d buckled and broken in record time from the pressure.  
  
Things he was and was not, things he had become and should not be.  
  
Pratt was losing his fucking mind.  
  
He was a little less twitchy than he’d been in the hours after Rook had pulled him from the bunker. He wasn’t talking about meat and culling the herd (not out loud, anyway; the phrases were still intruding into his psyche wherever they could) anymore, and he’d begun to slowly acclimate to the fact that Jacob was dead and That Fucking Song would not be getting pumped over the radio or the loudspeakers to drive the brainwashed crazy with conditioned rage and violence again. Pratt’s mind was shot, but he had improved in small, fragmented ways.  
  
On the somewhat-less-dim side (he could hardly call it brighter), he wasn’t alone.  
  
Rook was driving them out of the Whitetails and into Holland Valley. They didn’t speak, and her eyes stayed glued to the road. There was a hollowness to her eyes, a weariness in her posture, and Pratt really didn’t need to ask why to figure it out. Jacob Seed had that sort of effect on people: His way of making people ‘strong’ either turned you into a goddamn monster or broke you like a twig; no in-between.  
  
It was a shame, because Rook was _cute._ She was twenty-four, but looked younger; she had such a sweet-sounding voice, the kind that made her sound naturally friendly; the woman looked like a teddy-bear but fought like a goddamn wolverine, and Pratt had ribbed her mercilessly for it when she’d joined the department. He’d told her she reminded him of the puppies they trained into police dogs, too adorable to find frightening until she was big enough to bite. She was a nice girl, always had been, even when Pratt had teased her, and she could afford to be because it wasn’t as though she was coming up against hardcore gangs and drug cartels in rural Montana, right? She could _afford_ to be Good Cop.  
  
She wasn’t Good Cop anymore, though.  
  
That much was obvious from the last few days.  
  
Pratt saw the looks the Whitetails had given her at Eli’s funeral. He’d seen them glaring at her out of the corners of their eyes, even when Tammy had come up to her and assured her that Eli knew it wasn’t _her_ that had killed him. Rook hadn’t reacted to the assurance, remaining blank-faced and silent until Tammy stepped away. And when Wheaty had stood before the pyre and rallied the militia and they’d all cheered and vowed vengeance on Eden’s Gate, she’d remained just as stoic and quiet.  
  
Pratt sensed grief in her.  
  
And misery.  
  
And _defeat._  
  
But she was still moving, so there was that.  
  
“Where exactly are we going?” Pratt thought to ask.  
  
“Fall’s End.”  
  
Pratt relaxed a little. While with Jacob he’d gotten wind of the fact that Pastor Jerome had been leading the resistance in Holland Valley and, though Pratt wasn’t the religious type, the man had a ridiculously calming effect on the people around them. And he was Catholic, so maybe he’d be amenable to hearing Pratt’s confession- he had a lot of them to make. The idea of going back into town proper, where things wouldn’t be as militant as they’d been in the Whitetails with Jacob and the Whitetail Militia, was a fairly surreal prospect for Pratt.  
  
The Whitetails- Tammy, anyway- had offered him a place there. “You’re welcome to stay with us,” She’d said, leaning back against the table that held dozens of monitors, cameras staring out into the mountains and forest. “We got a place for you here if you want it.”  
  
“But not Rook.” Rook had been putting some gear into the car. Pratt could not help thinking that Tammy had waited for her to do just that before making the offer to him, and he just wasn’t in the mood to let things like this go for the sake of politeness. There was no propriety in the mountains of Hope County right now, and he wasn’t going to pretend there was.  
  
The flat statement had brought Tammy up short. “Rook’s welcome to fight with us as well,” She’d said cautiously, _so_ cautiously, like she was choosing those words very, very carefully.  
  
“No, she’s not.” Pratt had said it so simply, so bluntly. “You all look at her like she’s some kind of psychopath who’s gonna kill you in your fucking sleep if you turn your back to her.”  
  
Tammy had flinched; nearby, having been listening in on the conversation, Wheaty stiffened. “We don’t. That’s not-”  
  
But Pratt was on a roll now. “You do. You _do_ look at her like that. Like you have any fucking idea what Jacob was doing to us. Like you think we had a _choice._ ” He wasn’t sure when ‘Rook’ had turned into ‘us’, but it was true. “She’s my coworker. I haven’t known her _forever_ but I’ve known her long enough to know she didn’t just wake up one morning and think, ‘hey, I think I want to kill one of my allies today, because that would be fun!’ She didn’t have a fucking choice, I didn’t have a fucking choice, _none of us_ had a fucking choice, so maybe stop looking at her like she made a conscious decision to bend you over and _fuck you!_ ” He’d risen out of his seat, and suddenly he’d been yelling. Pratt wasn’t sure when he’d started doing it.  
  
God, he was losing it.  
  
Pratt watched the forest roll by, the numbness in his mind penetrated only occasionally by a spike of anxiety when he thought he spied something in the trees. After weeks of watching the Chosen hunters flitting through the trees and striking people unawares on security cameras, Pratt was paranoid; but then, was it paranoia if they really _were_ out to get you?  
  
Eventually, though, as they descended from the mountains and into the valley they began to come across more and more Resistance patrols that waved as they went by. A couple did a double-take when they saw who was in the truck, and Pratt couldn’t tell if they were staring at him or Rook; Rook had been cutting a path through Eden’s Gate for the last month and a half, and had earned her notoriety. If they were staring at Pratt, on the other hand, it was probably because they’d heard that fucking ‘ _apology_ ’ that Jacob had forced him to read over the loudspeakers in the park. Or, maybe they’d seen the video of Pratt screaming for mercy as Jacob left him to dehydrate to death in that room.  
  
Either way, he shrank down in his seat and avoided eye-contact.  
  
Forest gave way to open fields and farms- a surprising number of which were still standing rather than smoldering- and the Resistance presence became more obvious. Some of them had beers and were openly celebrating, probably because word had come down from the mountains that a second Seed brother was dead. Pratt, by all rights, should have been just as overjoyed to see his tormentor bloodied and dead- but he felt nothing. Nothing positive, anyway: Anxiety, shame, self-loathing, those were all very much alive in him now.  
  
Fall’s End had seen better days: They passed a bunch of houses and buildings that had been burned to the ground, others that had been damaged by explosives or heavy artillery fire. Rook pulled up outside the Spread Eagle, and Pratt was somewhat mystified to see people milling around outside like it was just a normal day in Hope County, no Eden’s Gate to speak of. He climbed out of the truck and looked around, feeling unbalanced by the sense of normalcy here juxtaposed with the ruined buildings that made up half the downtown area. “Christ,” he whispered to himself, looking around and instinctively looking to ID everyone he saw: There was Chuck, a barfly, he was still alive; Mary May was talking to a few people next to the Widowmaker, she was still alive; there was Annabelle, one of the teenage grocery store baggers, also alive; and there was Deputy Hudson, standing by-  
  
“Joey?” Pratt spoke without thinking.  
  
Hudson, who’d been standing by the door of the Spread Eagle with a half-drunk beer held loosely in her hand, turned sharply to find who’d addressed her. It took her a moment to find him and identify him- but then her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. “ _Staci!_ ” The bottle fell to the deck and cracked, what was left of it soaking the old wood. Hudson collided with him, throwing her arms around his shoulders and squeezing him tightly. Pratt crumpled a little in her embrace, the warmth and familiarity of her a stark reminder that no, he had not always been Jacob’s little pet prisoner, and yes, there had been a life before all of this insane shit had gone down. The last Pratt seen her, they’d been kneeling in the mud beyond the crashed helicopter as Joseph Seed paced before them and decided which of his siblings would take them. Pratt had been falling in and out of consciousness, held up by two Peggies as Joseph decided; the last he remembered was Hudson screaming and the two of them being dragged away, everything going dark and staying that way.  
  
Until he’d woken up in one of Jacob’s cages, of course.  
  
When they parted, Hudson’s eyes were wet. She hastily reached up to wipe them, maybe a little more aggressively than she needed to. “Didn’t expect to see you, I knew that Jacob was dead but I hadn’t heard about you- _thanks for telling me!_ ” She threw at Rook, who was leaning on the hood of the truck.  
  
The younger deputy smiled weakly in response and shrugged. “Thought I’d surprise you.” She was trying to look casual, but Pratt could see that Hudson had gotten over the initial shock of seeing them and was looking more closely now- and what she was seeing probably was probably fucking awful. They’d both been beaten and starved to hell and back, Pratt in particular; just being upright and walking right now was completely exhausting for him after a few days of Jacob leaving him in isolation.  
  
“Well- God-damn, you two look terrible. Come on in.”  
  
Hudson led them into the Spread Eagle, which was as populated now as it would be on a normal night. Rook was greeted warmly and Pratt was greeted with surprise by the patrons of the bar- clearly Hudson wasn’t the only one who’d assumed he was dead by now. Mary May and Casey fixed them some food, and when Pratt went reflexively to dig for his wallet Mary May smacked him on the shoulder with a towel. “ _Deputy_ ,” She chided, shaking her head.  
  
“Thanks,” Pratt muttered. He _must_ have looked like shit, because Mary May winked at him before walking back to the kitchen. Before, Pratt had never been above flirting, and Mary May had always rolled her eyes at the attempts; as had Hudson, and Rook, and pretty much every other woman he’d flirted with. For her to initiate said that she was feeling bad for him- or that she was glad he was alive, though he suspected the former more than the latter. “So,” He asked finally, after the hum of the bar’s other voices and noises had fallen into the background and they’d had a chance to eat. “Holland Valley’s been cleared of Peggies?”  
  
“For the most part,” Hudson agreed. “Still finding pockets of them here and there, but most of them were either killed or left when John died.”  
  
“And how many-” Pratt’s voice cut out for a moment, and he barely recovered in time to keep it from being too obvious. “…How many dead?”  
  
Both Hudson and Rook tensed imperceptibly. “No way to know just yet,” Hudson said quietly. “Some people might have been shipped off to the Whitetails, others off to the Henbane.”  
  
Most to the Whitetails, probably.  
  
Jacob needed them for his army. He ran through the Weak like fucking toilet-paper, used them as live targets for his chosen and made them fight each other to find the strongest. Pratt had probably killed some of them that way under the influence of the Song, had _culled the weak_ as was demanded of him by Jacob Seed, had slaughtered and beaten and woken up in the cage with blood and dirt caked under his nails and only when Jacob had forced him to be his errand boy did Pratt see the process and finally realize that he had killed ( _culled_ ) people, innocent ( _weak_ ) people because even the weak had their purpose and he had, _he_ had-  
  
“Staci!”  
  
He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, there were dozens and dozens of people missing, people he’d been charged with protecting and now they were probably dead by his hand dozens of people he’d taken forever from their families because he was weak weak weak too weak to resist the conditioning and the Song and too weak to be considered worthy by Jacob so what did that make him, what did that _make_ him but a worthless weakling who deserved to die for it-  
  
“Come on, up, up!”  
  
Pratt was moving, being hauled out of his seat. Even in his blinkered, panicked state he could see strange looks being thrown at him, and that only made it worse. _They know what I’ve done,_ he thought. _I’m a failure. I’m a shame to the department, to the county, I’m **weak…**_  
  
“This way, over here.”  
  
The change from the bar to the outdoors was sharp: With the setting of the sun had come a drop in temperature, and it was cold enough now that being outside for too long would become unpleasant. Fall was in full swing, and God, _God_ , he’d been with Jacob for so long, _too_ long, Pratt was never going to be normal, never going to be _whole_ again because there was no coming back from the sort of shit that Jacob Seed had put him through, no way of ever getting back to what he once was, the old Staci Pratt was dead dead dead and he was weak but this new one was even weaker and more pathetic than the old Jacob had ripped him open and exposed his weakness to everyone and the weak had to be culled-  
  
“Get the door.”  
  
Warm again.  
  
Now Pratt was on a floor, and maybe it was the simple matter of not being on his feet anymore, or maybe it was the lack of stimulation from the bar, or maybe the fit had just run its course, but finally he started to get a hold of himself. His vision cleared and focused in the dim light of the room, and he saw that Hudson and Rook had taken him to a house. A _familiar_ house, at that- Pratt would swear he’d been here before, would swear that he knew who that painting of a rabbit in a field belonged to because he’d seen it a few times before. This was the… The Thompson house! That was it. Pratt remembered having to stop in a few times because Jim Thompson, the sixteen year-old son of the home, had a bad habit of speed-racing through the Whitetails with his buddies. Pratt had caught him and hauled him home twice, stood in this very kitchen and explained in his Stern Officer voice that this was the sort of thing people got killed over and Jim needed to reevaluate what he considered to be ‘fun’.  
  
Had Pratt killed him?  
  
Had he killed Jim Sr., or maybe his wife Allie? Pratt remembered Allie Thompson, embarrassed, offering him coffee in-between sniping at Jim Jr. and apologizing for Pratt having to come out so late. Had John taken them to his bunker, like he had Hudson? Were they still there now? Had they been apprehended trying to escape the county? Were they lying in a makeshift grave somewhere because they’d been killed in the assault on Fall’s End?  
  
Pratt could ask, but he didn’t want to know.  
  
Hudson and Rook were kneeling on the floor beside him, spreading out sleeping bags and muttering to themselves. He cleared up in time to hear, “…lock the door, can’t take for granted that there aren’t any stray Peggies wandering around looking to launch a sneak-attack.”  
  
“Or Joseph looking to take back the Valley.”  
  
“That too.”  
  
Rook moved to lock the door, and Hudson’s eyes found Pratt’s in the dark. “You alright?” She asked.  
  
“No,” Pratt said hoarsely.  
  
Hudson stared at him for a moment, and then shrugged a shoulder. “Neither am I.” She patted the middle sleeping bag. “Here.”  
  
Pratt crawled over to it, slid into the bag and barely managed to resist yanking it over his head to block the rest of the world out. Rook and Hudson’s sleeping bags were close enough to his that he could feel them get into theirs alongside him. Rook laid down, and Joey stayed sitting as she clicked the safety into place on her gun before setting it down beside her.  
  
_(Keep your ri-fle byyyy yooour siiiide_ )  
  
Pratt grit his teeth, dug the fingers on one hand into his thigh.  
  
“Staci,” Hudson remarked as she laid down, “This is the part where you’re supposed to make some stupid crack about being in bed with two beautiful women.” She was trying to be funny, but Pratt saw genuine concern in her eyes; because yes, that would have absolutely been a joke he would have made Before. Now, though, he wasn’t sure he’d find anything funny ever again.  
  
Still he tried to humor her, digging around for something that sounded like his old self. “Where are the beautiful women, then?” He asked, and Rook made an offended sound and smacked him lightly on the back, while Hudson cackled softly with amusement.  
  
“Bastard,” She said, swatting him the way she had in the helicopter when he’d offered her the flask.  
  
God, that was forever ago. A lifetime ago.  
  
Pratt pressed his face into the sleeping bag, and if Rook and Hudson pressed a little closer to him on either side, he didn’t mind. It felt good to have them close, to know they were safe and that Hudson had that gun ready to go if they needed it because ( ** _he was weak_** ) it made _him_ feel safe ( ** _because he was weak, weak, weak, the weak need to be culled, cull the herd_** )-  
  
Pratt pressed a little closer to Hudson and shut his eyes.  
  
_Go away. Go **away**_.  
  
( ** _so very, very weak_** )  
  
It was never going to go away.  
  
Never.  
  
-End


End file.
